The Arkansas Banner

Our Contemporaries and our Extra.

We published last week an extra, which will be found in another column of our paper, stating the terms of a peace with Mexico, taken from an extra published by a Spanish paper ("La Patria") in New Orleans. Without having any confidence in the report we think there could be little harm done in furnishing our readers with information which was deemed worthy of dissemination in N. Orleans, improbable as it was. In so doing we have provoked the jeers of our neighbors, of the Gazette and Democrat. The former says, that a Mexican "inflated with vanity" &c. should have concocted such a treaty did not surprise him. "But that the editor of the Banner should have yielded credence to it, so far as to put it forth in an extra, is a matter of surprise and evidence that he is yet young in his profession." Now we are certainly young as an editor, but we must learn from a more experienced source than our neighbor of the Gazette, before putting forth an Extra that we must know and believe the truth of it. And we acknowledge ourselves very green, but we never were so verdant as to issue an extra containing the important information, first published by the Gazette, that the Arkansas regiment had disgracefully fled &c. We didn't "herald" that.

The "gravity" of the Democrat "was not a little disturbed," that such an extra should have been issued "without comment." We can tell him how this happened. The N. Orleans Extra, was handed in at our office by Capt. Tims, about mid-day during our absence. Before we returned to our duties, the industry of our folks in the office, enabled them to issue and distribute copies of it. It proceeded from a laudable desire, to place before the public every thing of interest, and we consequently "have no reason to blush for our extra-action." The editor says, he has purchased a spade, and intends to apply for the contract to dig that canal. It is generally supposed, that the Democrat has sufficient employment at home, in that line, so actively is it engaged in digging its own grave, by digging at the most prominent men of the party, and attempting to pick up whigs. This work we should think, without going to ditching, would be quite dirty enough, but every man to his taste.

To return however to the subject of Peace with Mexico, we are now fully convinced that our government will never consent to give up the Californias without indemnity for the expenses of the war. We are strengthened in this opinion, by the reply of the Washington Union to the cry of "No Mexican territory," made by the whigs for electioneering purposes. It claims that we have expended an immense amount of treasure, and for the costly assertion of our rights, we must have compensation, the country will demand it. "and our interests make California, with its fine harbors thrown open to our 600 whalers and 20,000 seamen, its beautiful region to our people and our manufacturers," the proper and most desirable "indemnity for the past and security for the future."